Election conflict puts Sistani in the middle

- 06-10-2009 — Recently formed “Turk­men National Bloc (con­tains many Turk­men known par­ties) joined INA — I think this more polit­i­cal moti­vated than reli­gious rea­sons — The Turk­men fear that Maliki will cut a deal with the Kurds on Kirkuk.

- The “Green Zone” news­pa­per AL-Sabaahdenied later by Sistani’s office, AL-Saghir “INA” crit­i­cized the gov­ern­ment con­trolled media say­ing: It is biased”).

The rea­son behind the above rumor is revealed by Awan :

The exis­tence of an undis­closed agree­ment between the Maliki’s oppo­nents to sup­port the “closed list” sys­tem, adding that in a closed meet­ing last Sun­day, the par­lia­ment agreed to adopt the “closed list” system.

Azza­man reported that the House speaker Al-Samarai is also involved in the above “secret” agreement.

Awan also explains the strug­gle between the “closed-list” and the “open-list” polit­i­cal blocs:

Those sup­port the closed-list are two types, those who to main­tain their polit­i­cal gains obtained in the pre­vi­ous par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, the sec­ond are the small polit­i­cal enti­ties, their only chance is the closed-list.